The present invention relates to the art of processing brush cuttings, such as those resulting from the pruning of almond trees, and more particularly is concerned with the formation of bales of such cuttings which are storable in stacked condition and ideally suited for use as combustible fuel. In its more specific aspects, the invention is directed to a method for forming and transporting such bales and an apparatus which may be employed to practice the method.
Prior efforts relating to the baling of prunings have employed compactors which compress with either a single vertically moving plunger, or a multiplicity of lateral plungers. The latter type are similar in operation to those used in wrecking yards. Both techniques have required that the loose cuttings be transported to a central compacting area, and result in a bale which is extremely dense, with the cuttings positioned in large part, horizontally. The resulting bales captured dirt and water and, due to the presence of water, posed a risk of spontaneous combustion. The presence of the dirt and water also made them less than ideal for use as combustible fuel. Furthermore, the extremely dense and interwoven character of the bales made it very difficult to separate them into combustible sized components. Such separation required the use of saws or large-scale shearing mechanisms.
Although transfer packers and transfer trailers similar to those employed in the present invention are known in the refuse processing art, they have not been used for the processing of elongate brush cuttings, nor have they been provided in a fully portable configuration wherein the packer is provided with a crane-operated grapple for loading cuttings directly into the packer. Refuse systems generally employ relatively small collection vehicles (garbage trucks) which collect refuse and take it to a stationary central processing station where it is compacted within a packer and then discharged into a transfer trailer for transport to a dump site. Refuse systems have not been concerned with the formation of bales of relatively dry and clean material which may be readily separated for use as combustible fuel.